“They are the candles she has given the poor that are now shining in God’s house.”

“We lie warm in our graves as long as she gives clothes and wood to the poor.”

“She has spoken so many noble words that have opened the hearts of men; those words are the keys of our pews.

“She has thought beautiful thoughts of God’s love.  Those thoughts raise us from our graves.”

So they whispered and murmured before they sat down in the pews and bent their pale foreheads in prayer in their shrunken hands.

***

At Arsta some one came into Mamsell Fredrika’s room and laid her hand gently on the sleeper’s arm.

“Up, my Fredrika!  It is time to go to the early mass.”

Old Mamsell Fredrika opened her eyes and saw Agathe, her beloved sister who was dead, standing by the bed with a candle in her hand.  She recognized her, for she looked just as she had done on earth.  Mamsell Fredrika was not afraid; she rejoiced only at seeing her loved one, at whose side she longed to sleep the everlasting sleep.

She rose and dressed herself with all speed.  There was no time for conversation; the carriage stood before the door.  The others must have gone already, for no one but Mamsell Fredrika and her dead sister were moving in the house.

“Do you remember, Fredrika,” said the sister, as they sat in the carriage and drove quickly to the church, “do you remember how you always in the old days expected some knight to carry you off on the road to church?”

“I am still expecting it,” said old Mamsell Fredrika, and laughed.  “I never ride in this carriage without looking out for my knight.”

Even though they hurried, they came too late.  The priest stepped down from the pulpit as they entered the church, and the closing hymn began.  Never had Mamsell Fredrika heard such a beautiful song.  It was as if both earth and heaven joined in, in the song; as if every bench and stone and board had sung too.

She had never seen the church so crowded:  on the communion table and on the pulpit steps sat people; they stood in the aisles, they thronged in the pews, and outside the whole road was packed with people who could not enter.  The sisters, however, found places; for them the crowd moved aside.

“Fredrika,” said her sister, “look at the people!”

And Mamsell Fredrika looked and looked.

Then she perceived that she, like the woman in the saga, had come to a mass of the dead.  She felt a cold shiver pass down her back, but it happened, as often before, she felt more curious than frightened.

She saw now who were in the church.  There were none but women there:  grey, bent forms, with circular capes and faded mantillas, with hats of faded splendor and turned or threadbare dresses.  She saw an unheard-of number of wrinkled faces, sunken mouths, dim eyes and shrivelled hands, but not a single hand which wore a plain gold ring.